Ever had a moment when your gut feeling was screaming, “Listen to me!” louder than a rock concert? From narrowly escaping disaster to stumbling upon unexpected opportunities, these tales will have you on the edge of your seat. It’s like tapping into a secret superpower we all have, but often overlook. It’s gonna be an adventure you won’t want to miss!
Really didn’t feel like going out for a drink after work with friends, but something told me to go. Met my husband that night in the bar, and we’ve been married for 24 years.
In high school around everybody’s birthday, all their friends would go all out, bringing balloons, brownies, gifts, you name it. It was just a fun tradition the whole school partook in to help with stress and whatnot. Fast forward to my birthday and as per usual I was given balloons, cake, and funny letters from my good friends. All of a sudden I felt like someone was watching me and I turn around to see a girl in our class staring at me. I walk over and just start a conversation with her, asking her when her own birthday was, and made a mental note. I had such a strong gut feeling that I NEEDED to do something for her on her birthday even though this was our first time talking. I knew this girl was very shy, a little strange, and had recently been given a lot of crap for coming out to a few people at our school, so I figured her birthday might not be as recognized or participated in as maybe mine was.
Fast forward to her own birthday, and I brought her the biggest balloon I could find and some baked goods. As classes went on, I soon realized that was the only thing anyone got her that day. I caught her in the parking lot to say happy birthday one last time before heading to practice and she seemed happy and normal.
Fast forward to about 4 months later I got chatting to her again. She pulled me aside and told me that for the last year or so she had been planning to end herself on her birthday. I was in shock. She told me that the balloon and goodies showed her enough of a brighter side to life to hold off and rethink things since a stranger seemed to care enough about a special day for her. I still can’t believe it.
When I was about 9-10 years old I used to water my neighbors plants for her when she was on vacation. Normally my older brother and I went together but the previous day we got into a giant argument that turned into a water fight while doing the task so my mom decided we would go alone on alternate days for the rest of her trip. Now my neighbor had A LOT of flowers both in front of me and I’m back of her house and tiny 10-year-old me had to drag a hose between the two. It wasn’t an easy task.
I started by dragging the hose from the side yard to the front. I noticed the back sliding screen door was in the center, where I thought it was usually to the side. I shrugged it off and got the hose to the front door. Then, all of a sudden had a gut feeling something was off and I needed to get out of there. I dropped the hose and went back to my house next door (separated by about an acre of heavily wooded area). I told my mom something was off and I was too scared to finish watering. She brushed me off and we went about our day, telling me we could finish the task together later. She thought I was just too tired or lazy to do it all on my own. I told her that it wasn’t true and I got a weird feeling over there. But anyways we decided we would return that evening when it cooled off.
When we returned that evening the back window was broken and my neighbors house had been robbed. One of the large flower pots was now knocked over, where it hadn’t been that morning. The screen door was now off to the side again. That means the burglars were probably inside while I was outside watering the plants. We were both terrified and called the police of course.
My mom now believes my gut feelings.
My sister’s first husband. I was 5 when they got married, and I only actually met him a few times in person because they lived on the other side of the country. My family really loved him–he was charming, athletic, smart, handsome, financially secure, and seemed like a great dad when they had kids. Plus, he was never anything but nice to me. But I always sensed something shady about the guy. When I was in the 5th grade, I remember getting in huge trouble for a class assignment–an essay describing our families–in which I described him as a bad person–pretty much word for word, “There’s something I just don’t like about him.” It was one of the only times I got spanked as a child.
Well, fast forward a couple of years, and my parents discovered that he’d been abusive to my sister and the kids almost the whole time. They ended up divorcing, and he has proven to be a complete sociopath ever since. He hadn’t paid a dime in child support, despite being well off enough to buy a new luxury sports car every few years, and uses their two kids (who are now teenagers who know he’s full of sh*t) to play mind games with my sister–bringing her to court for full custody, knowing he won’t win due to his past, just to cause her inconvenience and rack up legal fees for her, just as an example. He also has refused to let the kids fly out to visit our side of the family a few times for no reason whatsoever. He’s an a**hole, a narcissist, a complete sociopath and somehow 10-year-old me was able to sense it before anyone else in my family.
I was driving home late at night and just minding my own business, hanging out in the center of three lanes on the highway doing maybe a few MPH over the speed limit. Suddenly I just felt – almost heard – the strongest gut feeling I’d ever had that I needed to swerve over now. So I did, and not a second later did a huge black truck come absolutely flying through all three lanes, just missing me by feet. Would have nailed me if I’d stayed where I was. F*cker didn’t have his lights on so I had no idea he was there.
I don’t believe in god or prayer or anything like that at all. My mother, though, called me almost immediately after this happened. She said she woke up with an urgent feeling to pray for me right then. She asked if anything had happened. I told her about what had happened and she started crying.
Absolutely nuts.
I was like eight or nine when my parents took me and my younger brother to stay the night at my paternal grandparents’ house because they were in the middle of divorcing. They lived in a farmhouse that was connected to a barn (with machinery, gasoline tanks, and hay on the ground floor and furnished rooms on the floor above that) and the room we were supposed to stay in was in that barn. As soon as we went into the guest room, I was overwhelmed by panic and felt really dizzy. I turned around and just said that we will not sleep in that room and we spent the night on the couch in the living room instead. Later that night, a gas leak in the barn ignited and almost the entire barn including the guest rooms on its top floor exploded. Maybe I had that weird feeling because the gas had leaked into the room already but no one else felt anything and I’m sure I would be dead if I hadn’t noticed it
I used to live in the UWS and ran running at night.
I would run from Central Park up a few blocks and down to home. I lived more central South so it was a good area.
One night, I felt a bit off. No reason.
I always ran this route so I didn’t know why.
I thought I was bored so I ran south before I ran home. The next day when I was walking to the subway, there were flyers asking to identify a Jane Doe who was st*bbed the night before on the street I usually run down.
I couldn’t sleep so I was driving around in the middle of the night, listening to music and enjoying the empty roads. Finally, I started heading for home and joined up with my usual route, getting to a point where I can turn right to head home, and left goes up towards the next big town. I’d been driving for a while but as I reached this turn I had the overwhelming urge to turn left. Every time I thought about turning right, I felt this sense of dread and discomfort. I couldn’t even bring myself to start to signal in that direction. I turned left instead and drove to the next town, turned around there, and came back, adding about 40 extra minutes to my journey. When I approached that road again, I felt fine and continued home.
I arrive home and literally as I’m turning into my drive, my tire blows out. No warning, just bam. Luckily I’m only going about 5mph as I turn into my drive, but it was still an effort to control the car. It was almost impossible to park it; the steering wheel was hard to turn, and the passenger side of the car felt heavy and difficult to manoeuvre. I was pissed but thankful it had happened when I was in my drive, and not stranded out in the country at 3 am.
It hit me as I was organising someone to come out and fix it the next day. Usually, at that time of the morning, I would be heading into town. If the tire was going to blow, it would have done so 20 minutes into the journey — when I was on a busy road doing 60mph with oncoming traffic only feet away. The extra time added to the journey the night before had instead caused it to blow harmlessly in my drive. I have no way to prove that it would have blown in a more dangerous place, but considering my gut instinct, I do think the detour probably saved my a**.
It was like someone was telling me to stand in my kitchen. I had everything I needed to leave for work, but this feeling of forgetting something was so strong I just stood there. After I checked for everything again, I took a step towards the door and it was like someone was yelling at me to stop, so I stood for 10 more seconds. And then the feeling went away like a gate was lifted and I could pass.
Got in my car and did my normal drive. Hit some heavier-than-normal traffic before coming across a 5 car pile up. One car was turned 180, others were smashed and everyone was standing around on their phones. Had I left like I wanted to, I would have been it. I knew it, too and just said out loud, “Thank you.”
I was in a long-term relationship for several years during college. One time, we went on a short road trip with my beautiful best friend and two other friends, and I was in just a horrible mood. No idea why.
Several months later, when we were “off again,” I was in the shower and the weirdest thought popped into my head: “Boyfriend should date best friend! They’d be perfect together!” It didn’t make any sense, but I felt compelled to address it with my boyfriend.
I called him and told him what had popped into my head, and he immediately confessed that he’d been in love with her since before we had broken up.
(To be clear, this love affair was completely one-sided and my friend had no idea until after I did. When the boyfriend eventually declared his love, she gave him a verbal lashing and was totally freaked out.)
I was on a road trip with my family (about 16 yrs old) and we stopped to get gas.
I had to go to the bathroom VERY badly, so I walked into the convenience store to ask about the bathroom. At that point the man behind the counter, another man talking to him on my side of the counter and a third in the aisle all stopped to look at me and smiled at me in a way that wasn’t exactly friendly but didn’t seem outright menacing either. I just didn’t feel right.
Then in my head, I clearly heard “If you stay in here, you will get r*ped.”
I was shocked because I don’t have messages like that cross my brain, so I walked back out to find my Mom and ask if she would come in with me. she agreed, and pretended to browse the shelves while I used the room of rest. When I came out, she asked me to stick around nearby because she had to use the bathroom, too. Meanwhile, my brother and Dad are outside being manly around the car and not coming in.
My mom finally comes out and puts her arm around me as we walk out, all the while being watched by these 3 guys with their strange half-smiles. As soon as we get outside, my Mom turns to me and says “Thanks for sticking around. I had the weirdest feeling if I’d been there by myself, I was going to get r*ped.”
I don’t recall where we stopped so I can’t check to see if something happened after we left, but the fact that my Mom had the exact same feeling as I did was enough to convince me I hadn’t been overreacting to some weird stimuli.
My girlfriend and I were looking for apartments for a few months to no avail. I came across one that she absolutely loved. We went and looked at it soon after. It was a 2 bedroom with a large living room and multiple closets. Although for some reason I just didn’t like it. Now I’m not normally one to get bad vibes, but for some reason, I really just did not feel right in the place.
I told the landlord we just weren’t interested. My girlfriend was a little upset with me especially since we had been looking at quite a few places and this one was right in our price range. I told her for some reason I just got a bad vibe being in there. A few weeks later we found a cheaper place and the perfect size not too far from that other apartment. So it all worked out in the end.
Fast forward to a year later, my girlfriend and I are watching tv when she begins to smell smoke. We shut off the tv and go about the apartment trying to find the source. Soon we begin to hear sirens going down the streets. We look out the windows and don’t see anything going on. So I said I’d go outside and figure out what was happening.
The smell was much stronger outside. I walked two blocks over to follow the sirens and see smoke pouring out of the apartment we had looked at. There were fire trucks everywhere and more kept coming. I stared in disbelief as the place we almost rented was being sounded by firemen smashing out windows. Almost laughing one man in sandals holding up his shorts with one hand ran towards the fire attempting to be a hero. Only when an officer threatened to arrest him did he back off. At the end of it I counted 18 fire trucks lined up and down the street. Most of them seemed to be just waiting ready in case the fire spread.
After watching for what seemed like forever, I realized I forgot my phone to call my girlfriend. I walked back and found her with my landlord and his wife in the backyard (the landlord lived in the building). I told them that the place up in flames was the place we almost rented. My girlfriend was in disbelief. My landlord offered me a beer and we all just watched for probably another hour as the firemen just kept the blaze under control.
After the fire was put out a total of 3 buildings were lost including the building with the unit we almost rented. The next day I purchased renters insurance. I’m not a religious person, but I definitely believe that bad vibes actually mean something.
I was out with my aunt and this much older woman, maybe in her 90s stopped us at the grocery store saying she was a psychic and she didn’t usually stop people but I needed to be much more careful when I’m on my own and strongly suggested I need to carry pepper spray. When I asked why and she said she knows I love to take walks and be by myself but I’m too consumed in my thoughts or distracted by the beauty to recognize danger right away.
I took this lightly and didn’t really agree until I was at a reptile expo. My dad was in the bathroom and I was walking around looking at snakes. I was holding this ball python when I felt breath on my neck and awkwardly moved over without looking over my shoulder assuming somebody else wanted to look at the snakes. Then this woman aggressively shoved her way between me and this other person like she was ready to fight with him.
She then told me it was a strange man who was following me around and she had a really bad feeling about him, being a mother. She kept her eye on me and he had hovered over me an uncomfortable long time once I was alone. She was the second one who told me to watch my surroundings or carry pepper spray. So I thanked her and looked past her to see the man she was talking about. He did give off bad vibes. Really tall, with long stringy hair, sunken eyes, and scars on his face.
That’s two strangers with gut feelings about me so guess who owns pepper spray now.
My mother’s story – I was told at 16 I would very much struggle to conceive, if at all. so I was never worried about it. Skip to me at 20. Started dating this guy (he was awful, but that’s another thing) after 3 1/2 months of us together my mother hands me a pregnancy test (she’s never done that) and said to just do it cuz she can’t get it out of her head. I pee on the stick, lines come up almost instantly… turns out, I was just under 3 months pregnant. No symptoms, no nothing. Mum had a “weird feeling” and she was right. Told her next time she has a “weird feeling” she would keep it to herself lol
I work at a small credit union and we have limits for how much we keep in our drawers up front, anything over the limit needs to be put in the vault, we also have a limit for how much we can have in our drawer at the end of the day, the excess gets sold to the vault. One day a teller left early for the day and sold me her excess cash because the vault teller wasn’t available, it was around $7000 and I’m putting it in my drawer so I can post the adjustment for her selling the cash to me when I see this man walk in, and something feels off. My gut feeling tells me something bad is going to happen. I greet the man and he walks up to my window and then stops, puts up a finger like “Just a moment please” and walks back out of the door, I look at the other teller on the line with me and we both thought that was weird. I decide not to wait and put my excess cash in the vault, I walked to the back and was counting the cash I was putting away when I hear this clattering noise from the teller line and I go back out and see the man walking out of the building and I ask the teller if he’s okay and he tells me the man had just robbed him. The man passed him a note telling him to give him all the cash he had, the clattering noise was the teller pushing his rolled coin through the window
If he had come to my window he would have gotten over $7000 but because he left and I had that gut feeling he robbed the other teller and only ended up with around $300. To this day I feel terrible for leaving that teller alone. I didn’t do anything against the policy by stepping away, but knowing he had to handle that alone caused me a lot of feelings of guilt.
Two years ago I was backpacking Asia. At this point, I was gone for almost 3 months, and I really wanted to go home, but before I went home, I had a 5-day “layover” trip booked. I was flying out from Indonesia, going to Malaysia for 15 hours, then heading to Istanbul for 3 days and then to London for 1 day, and back into Canada to get home. About 3 days before I head off to Malaysia I had this sickening feeling in my gut, like something bad was going to happen.
So I cancelled my flights the day before I left and rebooked to Taiwan and then to South Korea, with me getting home about 5 days before I said I was. Little did I know, that as I was on my flight from Incheon International to Vancouver, the international part of Istanbul’s airport was attacked by terrorists. I landed in Vancouver, turned my phone on, and had a crazy amount of texts from family and friends, considering I never told them I changed my plans (besides a family member living in Van so I could crash at their place for the night). I had no idea what was happening when I got off, so after I called my dad and told him I was fine, and what was he worrying about, that’s when he told me what happened.
I checked my old times of my flights and I would have been there at the time the attack happened.
When I was 28 weeks pregnant with my third child, I felt “off”. It had been several years since my last child was born and so many things had changed as far as the obstetrical guidelines. I asked the doctor if she had planned on checking my cervix (literally where the doc reaches up in there to check that the cervix isn’t dilating). She replied that it was an odd question, but in my previous pregnancy, it was a standard thing. Since they no longer do that, she sent me for a sonogram. She insisted everything was fine, and off I went.
As I laid on the bed for the sonogram I could tell something wasn’t quite right. The tech excused herself and as I waited alone in the room, I had a monster contraction. She returned to the room with a wheelchair and said she was taking me to labor and delivery and I was kinda chuckling about having a big contraction that she missed by stepping out. I had no idea what was to come.
I was in disbelief and confused as I saw my doctor running up the corridor, looking like she’d seen a ghost. Turns out my cervix was wide open – so much so that my bag of water (the amniotic sac baby lives in) was bulging and hanging out. This startling revelation overtook me and the adrenaline and fear sent me into labor.
I spent the next 2 hours laying Trendelenburg (head lower than feet) while I was given a harsh course of magnesium sulfate in an attempt to stop my labor. It slowed enough to take a medivac to another hospital as our local place did not have a NICU. I was greeted by a room full of doctors, nurses and students (teaching hospital).
Almost 24 hours to the minute from arrival my water broke, which is PPROM (Preterm premature rupture of membranes). They try to keep you pregnant (it’s a myth that you have to go into labor in 24 hours, so you can continue to regenerate amniotic fluid). I stayed on antepartum for 12 days before waking up into full-blown labor.
My baby was born at 29 weeks, 5 days and weighed 3lbs 9oz. He miraculously didn’t need a ventilator, despite being born with me having to be under general anesthesia. He spent 5 weeks in the NICU.
If I had ignored my gut that something was wrong, I very easily could have been a grieving mother. My boy turns 5 this month and he’s one special guy!
Interviewing a guy for a job. Something doesn’t feel right but my interviewing partner really seemed to like him. We get to his portfolio of work and I see my side project that I worked on alone as one of his websites. So I start asking him questions about it. What challenges he had, how the client was, etc.
I let him go on and on then I say, “I have to level with you. This is my work. You are showing me my own work. Look at the source near the footer. It has my website in the comments.
He went ghost white and I just sat there.
After that, I coached him a little on how not to suck and he left. We called the contracting agency that sent him and let them know.
I am a vet. Gave a vaccine to a toy breed dog today. Has had this vaccine before with no problems. Immediately after giving the shot, he just looked slightly off to me. Maybe just more quiet than usual. All vitals were normal. But just not quite his typical happy self. My gut said ehhh this is not right. I asked the owner to wait 15 minutes before leaving to make sure no vaccine reaction.
5 minutes later he had an anaphylactic seizure in my lobby. Was ready for it.
Immediate emergency treatment for anaphylaxis. One hour later- barking his fool head off incessantly in my treatment room to tell me he’s ready to go home lol
It was a coworker of mine, let’s call her “M”. M was friendly, and everyone liked her. Something was up with her though, and I had a bad vibe. She was always complaining about money issues but then would go out for meals or come into work with new clothes that were not indicative of someone with severe money problems. She allegedly complained of such severe financial problems that she was telling people she was having trouble putting food on the table for her kids. It was that level of desperation. Everyone really liked her, but I didn’t. I had a really odd feeling about her like she was being constantly deceptive.
People would always help her out, either by giving her gift cards to Target, extra clothes or canned food.
She also complained of car issues for a period of several months. This wonderfully kind lady at work – “C” – let M borrow her car during the workday. This was so that M could use whatever money she said she had to go to the store and buy food for her family. Additionally, she used C’s car to take a nap from time to time. She claimed to work another evening job and she was often very tired.
Every year, our company sponsored a local family that needed a lot of help. We were a small business at the time (<50 employees) and we’d all donate something to the family at Christmas. It was usually toys, clothes, gift cards and so forth. This year, we decided as a group to my silent opposition that M would be our “family” this particular year. We amassed close to $1,100 worth of food, toys and clothes and presented it to M before Christmas that year. She cried and said thank you.
Three months later, C’s car was stolen right out of the employee parking lot. Coincidentally, M didn’t report back to work that day after lunch. Long story short, M had made a copy of C’s car key at some point and stole the car and drove out of state with the intent to flee and not return. We had come to learn that M had a long history of criminal charges, and M was eventually arrested in a traffic stop after C reported the car stolen.
As it turned out, M was a financial criminal, specializing in identity theft. She had swindled many people and had a long criminal history including multiple felonies.
Right from the beginning, I knew something was up with her that I didn’t like, but I couldn’t put a real finger on it. I don’t know why I saw it and no one else did. I actually began to question my morals, asking myself “Why do I dislike M when everyone else does not?” I wrestled with it personally for some time, but in a weird way felt vindicated when the truth revealed itself.
The first day of my freshman year of college, I was standing in front of the building my next class was in, looking at my map. A guy smoking a cigarette asks if I need help finding my class. I probably didn’t, but he was cute, so I said yes. He got lost, so when we did find it, I was late. I quickly thanked him and went inside the classroom, and I thought that would be the end of it.
Two days later, when I had that class again, I was leaving the building when I saw him in the same spot he was in before. I had a break before my next class, so I joined him for a smoke. We got to talking about music; lo and behold, he was in a band that played my kind of music, and they had a show this weekend.
“I know you just met me, but…would you like to come down to [major city about an hour and a half away] with me to watch us play?”
Every single rational piece of my brain was like “No way in h*ll I’m letting a dude I just met drive me to [city] for the weekend,” but I also had the strongest gut feeling I’ve ever had telling me to go.
We were together for almost 4 years
I had never had a dog before, but when I decided to adopt one to help with my mental illness, my mom and I went on a mission to find the right one. I had met 5 or 6 dogs so far at shelters and adoption days and the like, but I hadn’t clicked with any of them. Then one night I found a picture of this little Chihuahua mix who I thought was the cutest thing, and the next day my mom told me she had made an appointment for the dog to come to our house to see if we want to adopt her! I hadn’t even mentioned this dog to her, it was a complete coincidence. The rest of that week I had the feeling that this would be the one, which freaked my mom out because she didn’t want me to be sad if it didn’t work out. But from the second that puppy walked through the doors I knew my gut was right; she’s the best thing to ever happen to me and the best dog on the planet.
Daddy and I had the best relationship a father and son could ever have! Plus, he accepted me for being gay. And spoiled me whenever he possibly could.
One December morning, he asked me to go hang out with him and my cousins and I really didn’t want to, but there was something telling me that I should go and hang out with dad. After all, it was the holidays and I didn’t really have anything to do that night. He texted me at about 9 am that day, “Let’s go get some drinks with your cousin, let’s go jamming” he said. I didn’t reply until 3 pm and said “K dad, pick me up by 4.”.
So we got together and caught up. He kept saying how much he loves me and Mama (he does that all the time, really annoying sometimes but that afternoon felt different). It was also one of the few days I said “I love you, Dad”.
We picked my cousin up and he took us to a bar by Manila Bay. He hung out at Starbucks and I asked him why he wasn’t hanging out with us. He told me to go hang out with my cousins cuz I rarely see them and that “you probably wouldn’t visit them soon.” That gave me chills. Holy sh*t, why is Dad acting weird and why does all of this feel strange? I felt the urge to hug him and said I won’t get sh*tfaced. I got sh*tfaced.
When he was driving me back to Ma’s house, he kept telling me how he loved me and Ma again, plus how lucky I am to have such amazing cousins – according to my cousins.
I never expected that that would be the last night I would ever see him, hear his voice, feel his hugs. He didn’t call me on Christmas, he just sent me a text. He passed away the following February. Feb 16, 2012.
Eventually, I ran out of reasons to go visit my cousins, everything dad said came true and I’m glad I listened to my gut feeling bout seeing him that day.
I used to work as a nurse in an old people’s home. I had great contact with one of the little old ladies there. One night, after having helped her get to bed I said “Good night, see you tomorrow”, knowing I was coming in the next morning.
“Oh no”, she said merrily, “I don’t think we’ll see each other tomorrow”.
It felt kind of off and I went home feeling strange about it. When I came in to work the next morning she had died peacefully in her sleep, no more than a few hours after I’d left her.
Back when I was running my business, a client of mine called to say “Can you invoice us early so we can pay you immediately?”
They never normally did this. The business was venture capital funded and had been going for many years without ever successfully selling anything.
I was pretty sure “invoice us early” was code for “The VC has pulled the plug. We’re about to go under and we’re giving you the opportunity to get your last invoice paid. Grab it with both hands”.
I was right.